Well, I'm starting to accept the contrail hypothesis.
The FAA says they didn't have any other reports about this. If this was a missile, lots of people would have seen it, pilots in the area especially. The radio would have been going nuts. No other reports mean it only looked this way from the particular spot where the camera was, ergo, contrail of an approaching aircraft.
I'd really like the pilot/cameraman to be interviewed so we can find out why this was reported as a missile. Did these people actually see the launch, or were they doing something else and then looked west and saw a "cloud", already formed, and just assumed the worst? Because it was reported as a missile launch from a specific point in the ocean, I've thought this whole time that the people in that helicopter actually saw the "missile" from a point in time only seconds from when it emerged from the surface, watched it climb, and could see the point on the surface where the smoke trail started. I guess I assumed that they wouldn't make an assumption that would raise a huge alarm. Doom on me.
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